Changes

Affects and motives, by way of giving them a conventional placement in the larger class of ideas that inhabit the ''mind'' of a particular agent, can be seen as belonging somewhat closer to the ''body'' of their agent, since they are especially concerned with maintaining the health and the life of that body, and they preserve an interest in the viability, the vitality, and the overall well being of the particular agent concerned.  Accordingly, whatever else the signs called ''pathemata'' are about, they are partly about the body of functions and structures that are required to maintain their agent in a viable form.  No matter what other objects their signals of conditions and their suggestions of actions may have, they are partially intended to serve a particular form of materially constituted agent and to help it preserve its own accustomed nature.

Affects and motives, by way of giving them a conventional placement in the larger class of ideas that inhabit the ''mind'' of a particular agent, can be seen as belonging somewhat closer to the ''body'' of their agent, since they are especially concerned with maintaining the health and the life of that body, and they preserve an interest in the viability, the vitality, and the overall well being of the particular agent concerned.  Accordingly, whatever else the signs called ''pathemata'' are about, they are partly about the body of functions and structures that are required to maintain their agent in a viable form.  No matter what other objects their signals of conditions and their suggestions of actions may have, they are partially intended to serve a particular form of materially constituted agent and to help it preserve its own accustomed nature.

To form a better sense of how affects and motives fit within the category of ideas, or mental signs, and of how they can be located within a suitable domain of interpretant signs, I give these pathemata the somewhat arbitrary collective name of ''motives or themes'' (MOTs), intended to suggest little more than the common coin of emotions and motivations, and then I quickly divide this overly bulky, burdensome, and burgeoning class of meanings into three subdomains:

To form a better sense of how affects and motives fit within the category of ideas, or mental signs, and of how they can be located within a suitable domain of interpretant signs, I give these pathemata the somewhat arbitrary collective name of "motives or themes" (MOT's), intended to suggest little more than the common coin of emotions and motivations, and then I quickly divide this overly bulky, burdensome, and burgeoning class of meanings into three subdomains:

 

 

3. The "never objective notions" (NON's)  

# The ''ostensibly ultimate interpretants'' (OUIs) comprise whatever aspects of affirmative and definite sense are available to these MOTs. They constitute the ultimate meanings that appear to be achievable and affirmable at a given moment in the development of an interpreter or in the evolution of an interpretation.  At any given time, they seem to be the ultimate interpretants that all properly directed mental processes are tending toward, and yet none of this stands in the way of diverse interpretants being taken as the ultimate achievables at other times.

# The ''almost never objective notions'' (ANONs)

# The ''never objective notions'' (NONs)  

Talk of mental impressions, whether taken literally, as being the forms that objects are imagined to impress on the mind, or taken figuratively, as bearing the information that objects are recognized to transfer into the medium afforded by the mind, is frequently criticized as a metaphor that leads to many false, misleading, specious, or spurious impressions.  For instance, the very idea of a mental impression is often censured on the grounds that it promotes an offshoot of illegitimate "instructivist" notions, themselves the outgrowth of commonly discredited "essentialist" doctrines, teaching something to the effect that objects have the power to "instruct" the mind about their essential natures or true properties, thereby directly, literally, and materially imbuing, informing, infusing, and "instructuring" the mind, not just "about" their actual characters, but fully "in" their ideal forms and wholly "with" their real natures.

Talk of mental impressions, whether taken literally, as being the forms that objects are imagined to impress on the mind, or taken figuratively, as bearing the information that objects are recognized to transfer into the medium afforded by the mind, is frequently criticized as a metaphor that leads to many false, misleading, specious, or spurious impressions.  For instance, the very idea of a mental impression is often censured on the grounds that it promotes an offshoot of illegitimate ''instructivist'' notions, themselves the outgrowth of commonly discredited ''essentialist'' doctrines, teaching something to the effect that objects have the power to “instruct” the mind about their essential natures or true properties, thereby directly, literally, and materially imbuing, informing, infusing, and “instructuring” the mind, not just ''about'' their actual characters, but fully ''in'' their ideal forms and wholly ''with'' their real natures.

Obviously, construing the word "impression" in this strict a fashion, hobbling it to senses that remain as naively literal as they favor the purely material, is bound to raise a welter of absurdities in the mind.  The notion that an object itself can provide instruction in its nature is not invidious in itself.  It is only the refractory implication that often accompanies it, the uncritical, unexamined, and unreflective assumption that this degree of directness affords a quality of infallibility to what nature teaches, insofar as its lessons can be imparted to the finite mind.  Regarded in this light, the fallacies imputed to "essentialist" doctrines and "instructivist" notions are not essential to the elements of validity that a charitable interpretation could find in them, but only variations on the same old theme, the pervasive illusion that any mode of infallible cognition is available to a finite mind.

Obviously, construing the word ''impression'' in that strict a fashion, hobbling it to senses that remain as naively literal as they favor the purely material, is bound to raise a welter of absurdities in the mind.  The notion that an object itself can provide instruction in its nature is not invidious in itself.  It is only the refractory implication that often accompanies it, the uncritical, unexamined, and unreflective assumption that this degree of directness affords a quality of infallibility to what nature teaches, insofar as its lessons can be imparted to the finite mind.  Regarded in this light, the fallacies imputed to essentialist doctrines and instructivist notions are not essential to the elements of validity that a charitable interpretation could find in them, but only variations on the same old theme, the pervasive illusion that any mode of infallible cognition is available to a finite mind.

What can be said about this fundamental fallacy, to wit, the presumption of infallibility that so persistently appears to affect the minds of the very agents who least deserve to claim its prerogative with any justice, that so frequently appears to remain as incorrigible as it is devoted to preserve its unregenerate state?  If one inquires into the origin of this delusion and into the source of its effects on the mind, then the issue can be divided into two branches, distinguishing the mechanisms of its operation from the motives of its enterprise, the "how" from the "why".  When it comes to the mechanisms that are capable of accomplishing the effects of this illusion, it seems to be through the creations of the imagination and the ingenuities of speculative thought, in short, through the inventions of "wishful thinking" that it manages to maintain itself.  When it comes to the motives that can be held responsible for mounting the measures of effort that the work on this web of deception requires, they seems to harbor their most fugitive aspiration in the overwhelming need to find some perfection somewhere.  This is tantamount to a desire or a disposition, affecting the conduct of agent who falls subject to it,  that expects a promise of perfect certainty at some point or other, and thus insists on placing a measure of absolute trust in a point of dogma or a rule of method.

What can be said about this fundamental fallacy, to wit, the presumption of infallibility that so persistently appears to affect the minds of the very agents who least deserve to claim its prerogative with any justice, that so frequently appears to remain as incorrigible as it is devoted to preserve its unregenerate state?  If one inquires into the origin of this delusion and into the source of its effects on the mind, then the issue can be divided into two branches, distinguishing the mechanisms of its operation from the motives of its enterprise, the ''how'' from the ''why''.  When it comes to the mechanisms that are capable of accomplishing the effects of this illusion, it seems to be through the creations of the imagination and the ingenuities of speculative thought, in short, through the inventions of wishful thinking that it manages to maintain itself.  When it comes to the motives that can be held responsible for mounting the measures of effort that the work on this web of deception requires, they seems to harbor their most fugitive aspiration in the overwhelming need to find some perfection somewhere.  This is tantamount to a desire or a disposition, affecting the conduct of agent who falls subject to it,  that expects a promise of perfect certainty at some point or other, and thus insists on placing a measure of absolute trust in a point of dogma or a rule of method.

Wherever there is an prevailing need to believe that one already knows, to think with respect to a question that the answer is already found, then there will be no genuine inquiry occurring in that direction.

Wherever there is an prevailing need to believe that one already knows, to think with respect to a question that the answer is already found, then there will be no genuine inquiry occurring in that direction.

If it pertinent to characterize the kind of agent that behaves this way, it is almost as if the agent imagines that it cannot actually be, neither begin to act, nor continue to act, without such a guarantee of certainty.  But what kind of surety would that be, but another specious certificate?  Perhaps this character of conduct is due to an excessive sensitivity to the "irritation of doubt" or an exaggerated intolerance for existing in a state of uncertainty.  But no amount of finite intuition can purchase an instruction so authoritative that it can ever be interpreted as infallible.  In summary, if "essentialism" and its oftentime corollary "instructivism" are interpreted perversely, that is, taking at face value the excessively literal images and the extremely material senses that their underlying thematic metaphors are able to bring to mind, then they are definitely capable of leading to ridiculous conclusions, but if they are interpreted in figurative and formal manners, then there may be a sufficient amount of interpretive "elbow room" for them to convey a measure of sense.

If it pertinent to characterize the kind of agent that behaves this way, it is almost as if the agent imagines that it cannot actually be, neither begin to act, nor continue to act, without such a guarantee of certainty.  But what kind of surety would that be, but another specious certificate?  Perhaps this character of conduct is due to an excessive sensitivity to the “irritation of doubt” or an exaggerated intolerance for existing in a state of uncertainty.  But no amount of finite intuition can purchase an instruction so authoritative that it can ever be interpreted as infallible.  In summary, if essentialism and its oftentimes corollary instructivism are interpreted perversely, that is, taking at face value the excessively literal images and the extremely material senses that their underlying thematic metaphors are able to bring to mind, then they are definitely capable of leading to ridiculous conclusions, but if they are interpreted in figurative and formal manners, then there may be a sufficient amount of interpretive elbow room for them to convey a measure of sense.

In this work I intend to give a liberal interpretation to the issue of what kinds of "forms" are able to "impress" their "shapes" on the mind.  I consider it likely that they can take the forms, among other things, of probability distributions, in other words, patterns of amplitude, density, frequency, intensity, or likely value that can be predicated of events in the world or impressions in the mind with equal felicity.  If these forms are still too concretely cast, then still more formal forms are available.  Abstracting from the contents of a strictly probabilistic interpretation, one is left with functions from domains of elementary events articulated in the world or existential experiences affecting the mind, respectively, to ranges of a common value, the height of which has the sole utility of indicating to different degrees the diverse elements under its dominion.  In the resulting spaces of functions, forms of dispensation or patterns of distribution accumulate over the domains of external events and the domains of internal experiences, respectively, like crowns of foliage above the branches of the corresponding trees.  It is trees like these, nothing more literal, that provides the material for mental impressions.  In summary, the medium of functional forms is able to furnish a common ground for the exchange of information between events and experiences and to supply a mode of comparison that connects any domain of objects with any domain of ideas.

In this work I intend to give a liberal interpretation to the issue of what kinds of "forms" are able to "impress" their "shapes" on the mind.  I consider it likely that they can take the forms, among other things, of probability distributions, in other words, patterns of amplitude, density, frequency, intensity, or likely value that can be predicated of events in the world or impressions in the mind with equal felicity.  If these forms are still too concretely cast, then still more formal forms are available.  Abstracting from the contents of a strictly probabilistic interpretation, one is left with functions from domains of elementary events articulated in the world or existential experiences affecting the mind, respectively, to ranges of a common value, the height of which has the sole utility of indicating to different degrees the diverse elements under its dominion.  In the resulting spaces of functions, forms of dispensation or patterns of distribution accumulate over the domains of external events and the domains of internal experiences, respectively, like crowns of foliage above the branches of the corresponding trees.  It is trees like these, nothing more literal, that provides the material for mental impressions.  In summary, the medium of functional forms is able to furnish a common ground for the exchange of information between events and experiences and to supply a mode of comparison that connects any domain of objects with any domain of ideas.